Listen to Robert Emmerich introduce The Big Apple, a hit song from 1937. Music written by Bob and performed by Tommy Dorsey's Clambake Seven with Bob on piano. Lyrics written by Buddy Bernier and sung by Edythe Wright. Audio provided by Dorothy Emmerich.

"There’s no place like home!” is one of the most famous of all American expressions. John Howard Payne (1791-1852) wrote these lyrics for “Home, Sweet Home” in the opera Clari, or the Maid of Milan (1823):

“‘Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there ‘s no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which sought through the world is ne’er met with elsewhere.
Home, sweet home,
There’s no place like home.”

In the film The Wizard of Oz (1939), Dorothy desires to return to Kansas and repeats, “There’s no place like home!”

The saying has been cited in print before 1823. “No place like home for safety will you find” was cited in 1782. “Home at last—quite exhausted—no place like home” was cited in 1810. “There is no place like home” was cited in print in The Curate’s Daughter (1823), by Mary Mullion.

Wikiquote: John Howard PayneJohn Howard Payne (9 June 1791 – 10 April 1852) was an American actor, playwright, author and statesman. He is today most remembered as the creator of “Home Sweet Home”, a song he wrote in 1822.

Sourced
‘Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there ‘s no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which sought through the world is ne’er met with elsewhere.
. Home, Sweet Home (1822), from the opera of “Clari, the Maid of Milan”, reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: “Home is home, though it be never so homely”, John Clarke, Paræmiologia, p. 101. (1639).

Wikiquote: The Wizard of OzThe Wizard of Oz is a 1939 musical film about a young Kansas girl cast into a fantasy world. Her efforts to return home are aided by three unusual companions, each with a quest of his own.
Directed by Victor Fleming. Written by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf, based on the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Music by Harold Arlen, Lyrics by Yip Harburg.

Dorothy
There’s no place like home; there’s no place like home; there’s no place like home…
[Note: This line is ranked #23 in the American Film Institute’s list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema.]

(Oxford English Dictionary)
(there’s) no place like home .
1810 ‘Piomingo’ Savage ix. 114 Home at last—quite exhausted—no place like home.
1822 J. H. Payne Home, Sweet Home (song) , Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.
1874 Times 27 June 11/2 Many who are incurable have kind friends and families willing..to nurse them at home. For such, we admit,: ‘there is no place like home’.

Google BooksPoems on Various Occasions:
Consisting of original pieces, and translations .from some of the most admired Latin Classics, Vol. I
By Samuel Rogers
Bath: Printed by R. Cruttwell, and published by T. Shrimpton
1782
Pg. 51:
THE AUTHOR’S ADDRESS TO HIS BOOK;
From MARTIAL, Book I, Epigram 2.
ON THE DANGER OF PUBLICATION.
(...)
Well; off then trifler — but this maxim mind —
No place like home for safety will you find.

Google BooksThe Savage
By Piomingo
Philadelphia, PA: Published by Thomas S. Manning
1810
Pg. 114:
Home at last—quite exhausted—no place like home.

Google BooksThe Curate’s Daughter,
A Tale for Young Persons
By Mary Mullion
London: G. and W. B. Whittaker
1823
Pg. 38:
“Now I am at home! There is no place like home; I was tired and hurried with that jolting machine! I will never travel in an opposition coach again, for opposition is hostile to a man’s comfort in all things.”

Google Books
22 November 1823, The New-York Mirror and Ladies’ Literary Gazette, pg. 132, col. 1:
CLARI,
OR THE MAID OF MILAN.
(...)
“‘Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there ‘s no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which sought through the world is ne’er met with elsewhere.
Home, sweet home,
There’s no place like home,” &c.